


take me to the sky high

by wegotodecember (imaginedecember)



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Anal Sex, Asphyxiation Kink, Come Eating, Curses, Dom/sub Undertones, Fantasy and Myths, M/M, Oral Fixation, Oral Sex, Praise Kink, Rough Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-19
Updated: 2019-02-23
Packaged: 2019-10-21 06:36:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17637665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imaginedecember/pseuds/wegotodecember
Summary: John finds a stranger in a hotel room and begs this man to make him forget everything. The nightmares. The tragedies. The wolves howling at his heart's door. All them images without a trace of understanding.But what John finds instead is an answer in the form of a curse, and an overflowing well of precarious truth.And John falls.Just as sure and strong and in every other universe, yes, of course, John falls.But, god, to fix the unfixable.Why, was it even possible?





	1. the chain

**Author's Note:**

> Title inspiration: Rhiannon, live, by Fleetwood Mac. I highly recommend watching Stevie sing this song live on youtube. It's astounding.
> 
> Note:
> 
>  **This is compliant with the story up to Horseshoe Overlook, so spoilers for this time in the story**. Although, in the beginning, John and Arthur do not know each other. It'll be explained by the end of the story as to why and how that happened.
> 
> This story contains **Explicit sexual content** between John and Arthur. **Heed all warnings and read the tags**.
> 
> It also involves curses, magic, and fantasies and myths such as soulmate AUs, prophecies, and multiple universes.

Slipped into the fountains of my emptiness

I let teardrops fall, I let 'em go

Stepped into the canyons of my loneliness

And I went about as far as I could go

Even as I searched for you, I knew

Even if I found you, you'd be so cold

Even when I found you now, baby I knew

That I had gone about as far as I could go

And if you don't love me now, you will never love me again

I can still hear you saying you would never break the chain

I can still hear you saying

That if you don't love me now, you won't love me again

-The Chain (demo), Fleetwood Mac

+

 

John didn’t wanna think anymore.

It was just…a pile, a big, huge pile of bad thoughts and even worse actions and it was dizzying, madding. It was…he couldn’t think anymore, not of solutions or disparages. No, jesus, he didn’t wanna think anymore.

It was too much…it was-.

He wore a dark gray button up. Left two buttons slipped out to reveal his chest. Slid on the tightest black pants he could get. A few rips and holes from his own patented dips and trips. Some loose threads. His gun belt hung low on it. And he thumbed the waistband, the heat there making him frenzied, the heat building and consuming as he rode hard, the hip movements just driving him madder. He was hard. So fucking hard and throbbing and he had tried countless times in the dark on the train he had hopped on, on the horse he stole, but his own hand was just as bad and crazed as his damn head, as his damn heart.

And he didn’t want some girl. No, he was searching for something darker.

He combed the salons, kept an eye on any up and down heated looks searching for love in the biting dark, in the combs of dancing light, but nothing, nothing until-.

“Woah, there…’m really sure, Miss, but just…’m not in the right mood, I guess. Not that you’re not gorgeous. You got a real pretty shine about ya but just, not tonight.”

“Why, Mister, that’s no problem at all.” Soft, murmuring, “You’re real kind. A gentleman. I ain’t seen much of that in these parts in a real long time.”

Bashful, just as soft and quiet, “Nah, I ain’t a good man by any means.” Brushing it under a deep, scratchy rug, “Now, you have a good night and be safe.”

The woman was gone in a puddle of perfume, something scratchy like that damn rug that sweet gentleman was trying to sweep his syrupy nature under. That smell was nothing to John.

He waved away that stink to smell, to inhale-.

Something as sweet and calling as the push and pull of the wide, full moon.

And John howled. He whipped the corner, followed those demanding footsteps, of heavy, worn boots, followed that sweet push and pull of musk, smoky, hazy cigarettes, whining and dizzying Earth and trees and-.

The man spun, just before the hallway ended, and didn’t do so to turn into a room. No, he looked right at John and that moon outside illuminated John’s doom.

God. 

A man.

A real and true man with eyes he couldn’t quite pin down like all the complexities that lied within that man’s soul, his heart. Rugged, chopped Earth like carved out mountains and craters in moons and explosions in stars and fences penned down into the mud. But…soft, muddled. Mud. If drowning was a good recess into the beyond and not a spazzing decent like it would’ve been for John. No. Soft. Kind. A singing prophecy.

Something that singed like dripping lanterns.

Fire. John always loved fire. Wide open spaces illuminated by campfires. Guns popping and expelling gas as they exploded through blood and bone, through muscle and veins. Leaking, stinging fire. Spat fire. Got called to by fire.

And he needed it so desperately. Not to think. To have it all burned away.

So, John acted.

He didn’t care if he was gonna get punched. Didn’t care if he was gonna get a bullet in his head. He just walked right up to that man, this barely whole, shaking thing of a man who was so complex and new and just a pure wonderment. A discovery. Ride hard through the country then settle, settle, settle for the flowers and the cactuses and the rolling dust that thrived in hot desert. 

Stinging, stinging. Settle, settle.

“Got a name, Mister?” God, and that voice, that-.

John wrapped his arms around the stranger’s neck and smiled, full of teeth and candor, when the man’s hands, strong and wide and calloused, and warm so damn warm, dipped, slipped to slide around his back down to his hips. Pressed bruises into bone and John shivered out a quivery, “John. You?”

The man chuckled. John seemed to be amusing and usually that made John bristle but the promise of a tease, of a man who could ruin him, was enticing. It made him bold. It made him bend just a bit to bite and gnaw at the man’s bottom lip, coaxed that chuckle into a hard stop, a slight whisper. 

And the man kissed him. Hard. Spun him into the wall and pushed as if he could shove John straight through the boards and on to the nearest bed. And this was too much and not enough. Warmth and scents and feeling. But all that was paused as the man pressed his hands into John’s chest, stilling him. John almost pouted, almost but the man placated him with a few sweet kisses on his neck, then his ear. 

“Shouldn’t be seducing a man in public like this.”

It was a decent, very true warning.

“Could get ya killed.” The man seemed sorrowful, as if loosing John already was too much of a tragedy. 

John looked into those eyes that he couldn’t quite pinpoint and watched the little trickles of honesty that he tried his damnedest to read. All he got was a man who was caught between two sides, whatever those sides were, and he seemed to want to forget too. And John could use that. Needed to be used. 

He ran his fingers through the man’s hair, and smiled when the man met his gaze and crooked an uptick of his lips, something soft and jagged as if it had never been used. And here, in some hallway of a bar, John felt like that in this he could easily and very well happily finally forget. 

He kissed the stranger softly then said pressed into red, bitten skin, “I don’t care if you don’t.” The tight bruising on his hips was back and John smiled. He posed the final question. “So, you wanna fuck me or am I fucking you?”

The man stuttered, seemed to, at once, freeze and kickstart. He chuckled, that bashful hiccup a little cute, a little off as he let go of John, and stepped back a bit. John watched him breathe harshly, puffing out thoughts that were whizzing out in his head but ones he didn’t speak out loud. The man rubbed his neck, his arms. And John wanted those hands on him, on his cock, in his ass. God, he hoped that the man wouldn’t like turn around and out the salon, away from him forever. He didn’t want that. Not at all. 

He grabbed for this stranger, reeled him in with a heart sick move, as he struggled to keep hold of the rock in the water that would save him from drowning. He stilled those running hands and interlaced their fingers. He pulled the stranger close until the stranger was nose to nose, boot to boot. Those eyes danced around John’s form and settled on his strong gaze, his focused eyes, that spoke volumes. 

The man spoke, “Name’s Arthur.”

John liked that. It…the thoughts were back. Thoughts of, god-.

Kings.

This man.

John restless, kissed the man, Arthur, from his lips to his neck to his collarbone, soaked the threads of a vest layered on a buttoned shirt and licked away sweat. The man ripped his hands from John’s grip to rack through his tangled hair. Beat the tangles away with swift and deft fingers. Jesus. Even that felt good. Heated and rolling massages and tugs. John needed Arthur to say it, to-.

“’M wanna fuck you.”

Yes, yes, yes, this.

John bit hard on Arthur’s collarbone and Arthur sucked in a breath, hard, raspy. “Please.” John didn’t plead. He didn’t whimper. But he always ran. And this was a new form of running. This was the best form of running.

He let Arthur lead him, let Arthur guide him to his room. 

Little details of this stranger blurred by and John tasted them, ran them over in his head as Arthur dug around his room for something to help ease their fucking.

In a dashing blur, dizzy from riding hard to standing to the bed, John saw a hat, worn from bullet grazes and time, a handy down no doubt. 

And there was a journal too. Halfway open with something tucked into its middle. Something with numbers that didn’t mean much sense. And then there were flower stems too, peaking out from the pages. And a pen sat on top. Navy blue. Soft, deep. Swirling.

Who was this man?

John wondered if the man drew or if he wrote, or both. It was both. He wondered what things about the world the man liked, what he didn’t. He never knew someone who stopped to wonder at what they saw. He was so used to running around for random gangs, for strangers that were neither here nor there, finding trains to hop and horses to steal. To settle. To take everything in even amidst a battle. He didn’t know of such a luxury.

To stand there amongst a field to pick a flower or two, to press them in between the pages and to draw the buffalo. To pull the bow back and refuse to hunt. Not yet. Because there was beauty within the beast. There was a resource there. Not many thought of such a thing. Of nature’s healing complexities. She showed her hand. She gave you your hand. 

But all you did was wander her depths looking for gold.

Looking for blood to spill.

You’ve been caught between the pages.

No, who are you John? 

The bed dipped.

No, who were you John?

John squirmed. 

He shoved all those thoughts aside. He was here to forget.

So.

He heaved in, out.

He had laid on his back with one knee pulled up, turned now away from that table with the hat and the journal and all them questions bottled up by the heart threatening to spill. 

Tears threatened. Salt bath. 

He pushed it all aside.

He swallowed. Hard. He wiggled and jerked as he focused back on Arthur, on him kneeling in front of him. Every bit of him seemed to glow even in the darkness, even in the little catches and glimpses of moonlight. Jesus. Those hands back again on both of his knees. Warm and holding. Stay. And John did. He let Arthur hover above him and fuck, those eyes, swimming now between a green and a blue and a brown and a push and a pull and-.

Fucking christ.

John outright moaned as those hands slid rapid fire to his cock, grabbed him hard and thumbed the slit. Zeroed in on it like a sniper seeing down a scope. No target was illusive. Even through fabric. Fuck. He was wet. He was wet with it. Rolled his eyes into the back of his head, kicked his legs a bit as Arthur kept thumbing liquid out of his cock. And John could come from this. He could. God, he could. He was wound up. Pressed down into the bed like those flowers. So tight and heated from these thoughts and these responsibilities and fountains spilling with its loneliness. Forgetting was so easy all mixed up in Arthur’s scent, a dashing dizzying back and forth between smoke, heady and intoxicating, to Earth and sweet, something herbal, something-.

Arthur hummed, the sound ripping John’s eyes open.

John watched, wide eyed as the man set a tin of something herbal, something just as Earthy as Arthur’s scent, to the left of them. Its impressions in the soft sheets. As soft and wilting as flower petals. 

Arthur rose an eyebrow at him, at his stare at that tin, then rumbled out, “S ginseng. You can get it around the area. It’s good for healing. And for…well…this.” A quick thumb swipe along John’s clothed cock and he whimpered. Arthur was good at tearing him apart, at-.

Arthur slide his hands underneath John, palming at his ass. “Loved you in these.” He then winked, something off centered and goofy and John couldn’t help it. He laughed.

“You trying real hard to be sexy but it ain’t working.”

Arthur rolled his eyes. “You’re so wet for me…I think you’re lying.”

Well…John felt like he was on fire. So, yeah, maybe Arthur was right but that didn’t mean he could know about it so he jabbed him in his side with his foot. Arthur caught the offending jab, slipped the boot off. Wrinkled his nose at the mud caked there and the holes. John giggled. He was a mess. But Arthur seemed to like it, even smiled as he poked a finger through one of the holes and wiggled it at John’s face. Laughed too. Pieces welding in tight together. 

Then, Arthur threw those boots somewhere in some dark, shadowy corner and went back to palming John’s ass, a sweet coaxing that got John unzipping his jeans and tugging them off. Arthur bunched up those and threw them aside. And he dipped down to kiss John’s bared knee, moaned just a bit at the clean taste of skin.

John had a plan, alright? 

And he was damned determined.

He scrambled up and reached for the button of Arthur’s shirt. He took a moment to appreciate all the colors laid before him. Arthur’s jeans were somehow sun dusted, star explosions imprinted into the black fabric. Could’ve just been a rough and tumble in some dust but they were delicious. 

And the vest that Arthur began to unbutton was soft like fancy velvet, something with blurring stripes. John needed to take over, to see it all laid before him by his own hands. So, he kneeled on the bed and scooted over. Arthur eased back at that, at John’s sudden boldness, at his snappiness as he slapped Arthur’s hands away and unbuttoned, slowly, with a kiss to each layer of fabric revealed to him. From vest to buttoned shirt to union suit. All the layers taken away to reveal. 

And Arthur gasped at it, something shaky and foreign and new. It tasted raw in the air. John could smell it. Arthur’s shyness and the newness mixed with the boldness he carried, the strength. Complexities. 

And, yes, fuck, Arthur was strong. He had muscles where John was lean and squirrelly. He had strength interlaced into every vein, muscle, and bone, and to heart. To heart. A strong heart that encased him whole. Seemed to feel said heart, its vibrations, its throbbing need as John sucked at the stripe of skin right before the waistband. Dipped his fingers further in beneath the fabric to poke at his hipbones and heaved in such a weight of utter wonderment as Arthur’s body danced between the shock and feel of John so close to him, loving him so, and the need to hide, to shy away from John’s wandering mouth, hands, and heart, to the outside world, to the shadows.

John hummed, staring up at Arthur as he eased the vest open, pushing, pushing, pushing until Arthur finally slid the vest off to land somewhere in the dark. Then, the buttons, which Arthur plucked and snapped at until they were tore away and gone. Another article in the dark. 

John rose a bit, kissing and wetting fabric as he unbuttoned the union suit and dragged it down to bunch at Arthur’s waist. His tongue thumbed at Arthur’s waistband, free now from all that fabric to claim skin, some clean and yet others dug in with little jagged scars from knives and where bullets had to get tugged out, and hands gripped and bunched into his tangled hair. Then, settled, somewhere in the air to jitter and shake.

One stripe along his skin and he felt Arthur curl into himself, into some dark, dark, recesses where scratches on a journal got pressed harder and harder until almost every word was blackened out, until every drawing was utterly butchered. These hands. How much blood had been split. How caked in ink they could be. Blood and ink swirling. Swirling.

John sucked a mark into Arthur’s stomach and looked up at eyes that didn’t dare meet his, at eyes that strayed to the window and stuck on the bustling outside.

There was something…off.

John wondered if Arthur didn’t want him but Arthur’s cock had been twitching from simple stripes of wet heat along his stomach. It wasn’t that. It was-.

“You know…you don’t gotta, John. If you don’t wanna.”

Arthur’s eyes were on the window but his hands were on John’s jaw, trying to coax his head up and get him to stand, to forget that John was in the presence of a man who thought he was all bloodshed and angry slashes of pencil. 

But this man wasn’t. 

He wasn’t.

John toyed and slipped away cold, jangling metal, as piercing as heart pounds, as cold as a memory trying to prickle into John’s consciousness. There was something familiar here. But John tossed those pains out the window, tried to get Arthur and his own focus back on this, this moment between them that was for them, only them.

This. 

John threw the belt away. He zipped down Arthur’s pants and mouthed at the union suit fabric that was doing a piss poor job of hiding his erection. And god. God. Arthur twitched in his mouth as John sucked wet patches into fabric and licked at the protruding head. Salt. Like tears. Like sweat. A hard day won. A hard, wild day coaxed into a smoothing lullaby, a coaxing meadow twinkling behind pines.

Pines. 

Pines.

John kicked that thought away and dug in.

He ripped down the union suit and licked with the tip of his tongue the leaking liquid that spilled from Arthur’s cock. He swallowed it. And Arthur startled. John smoothed his hands up Arthur’s thighs to his stomach, keeping him taught as he tongued and tongued the slit, sucking liquid down and kneading the tip for more.

Jesus. John inhaled it all. The scent. Pines and musk. Tasted it. Salt and sweat. Felt it. Every quiver and heave of Arthur’s inhales. 

Sucked it down, all of it. Arthur twitched in his mouth and that just made John suck harder, made him a curious bolt as he opened his mouth further and let Arthur fill his mouth with his red and throbbing heat. John moaned. He hummed. It vibrated up and down Arthur’s cock and Arthur jesus-.

He tangled his hands in John’s hair and yanked.

John teetered forward a bit from the roughness, gagging a little as Arthur’s cock bumped the back of his throat. But he loved it. It was molten lanterns spilling and digging nails into scars. It was like coming up for simmer summer after the wolves latched on to him and tore him apart, burst through him like fire through glass, like a bullet through brain. Cold. Winter.

Arthur was warm. So warm. And John felt so full. So full of Arthur’s cock in his mouth and Arthur’s hands in his hair and Arthur’s sounds, soft little shivery things that lit scratchy matches on John’s spine.

Then, quiet, quiet, quiet, “John.” 

And John finally, finally, finally, after a suspension caught in fullness and the leaking of remembrance, looked up at Arthur and there was an inky darkness there and written in his eyes was something as sure and strong as exploding stars, as the spinning of the seasons.

John let Arthur’s cock fall still hard and red from his mouth, let Arthur pull his hair and ease him to standing. John wobbled a bit, panting and coughing from the scratchiness in his throat. But Arthur’s arms were there, one wrapped around his back, the hand splayed over his burning, curving, wobbly spine. And the other hand on his neck, fingers toying with strands, as Arthur pushed, pushed, until their lips met. They kissed, even as Arthur kicked off the last bits of clothing he had, leaving them pressed skin to skin and close, so close.

John moaned between them and Arthur hummed, low and crackly, at the taste of himself that danced between their tongues and into each other’s mouths. And caught between them, a confession, something that grumbled out between pants, “Never had that before.”

John pulled back and raised an eyebrow. “Well, you’ve fucked a lot of idiots.” 

“I ain’t much anyways.”

That. John paused.

He took in everything around him.

Arthur was half undressed in front of him. He had John pressed to his chest, pressed so tight even that John could barely get a good look at him. And that was curious. That was. Oh.

John huffed and pulled away.

Arthur’s hands clenched shivery and yet rhythmic in its push and pull to get John to be coaxed back into his orbit but John was having none of that.

He had a guess and a guess was as good as gold in John’s opinion.

Don’t ask questions.

Just do.

John moved around the little room, tossing the flower and the journal and the hat out his brain window, and focused on things that could produce light. Fire.

Shine pretty baby in the light.

Come out of the darkness.

Show me who you’re really like.

John found the lamp.

He switched it on and looked at Arthur whose arms were crossed over his chest in some uncomfortable manner that seemed commonplace for him.

And, well, it did do wonders for the muscles. John almost felt like dying by this man’s chokehold was gonna be just as good as getting fucked. John couldn’t help it. He licked his lips. He palmed his cock. And with a wet hand, he ran a hand through his hair uncaringly and stepped back to Arthur, to this man who looked like he was ready to bolt back into the peace that the shadows promised.

But this was a man too full to bursting with tragedy.

Too full to bursting to know how precious he was.

Too full to bursting with how much of himself he gave away for others without a single care if he got anything in return.

What was love again? A state of mind, unreachable it seemed? What were dreams again? Could they unwind in this space? Hope. Could its drum beat be their crying song?

John swung a bit in front of Arthur. His hands couldn’t help themselves. They grabbed fistfuls of Arthur’s pecs, tweaked and flicked at his nipples, and smoothed up until they were cradling Arthur’s jaw. Those spinning colors in full out asunder were lit now. John could see everything swirling inside them and he murmured, “There. Better.” And eased, with a slow, syrupy kiss, “Can’t stop watching ya.”

Arthur chuckled. There was a softness there now. In the lines in his features. In the dots of scars that John tried to connect and guess the stories laid within. There was a calmness now, an openness that got startled out of Arthur when John switched the light on. Thought Arthur was gonna bolt. Sure looked like it but maybe John was easing him down now, letting Arthur know that, alright sure he could go and shatter mirrors and not look in them but John would do his damnedest to put the mirrors together and show Arthur what he saw.

Which was a good man, through and through. Warm. Kept John so warm. And was so good. And kind. And loyal. 

And where were these words coming from?

How come they sounded like a decades long list made from experience and not a guessing game? 

Sure and strong as truth and honesty.

John wanted to ask but Arthur was kissing him now, shivering too as he bit, “You’re so damn cold.”

John hummed. “Warm me up, then.” Palmed Arthur’s still hard cock and giggled when the man bit out a gasp. “Fuck me. Hard. C’mon.”

Arthur nipped at John’s bottom lip and sucked and licked on it, ravishing it to red, as he grumbled out in between rolls of his tongue, “’M curious.”

John whined as Arthur abused his lips and pouted when the man pulled back just enough. He wanted more of him damn it. And it didn’t help when there was a dark gleam beneath the blue surface of Arthur’s gaze. Digging into the depths, John shivered at what could possibly be there. He teased, “This can’t be good.”

Arthur rolled his eyes and tapped a weird little dance along John’s jaw then to his collarbone where he dipped down to teeth a throbbing mark. John started, pressing into Arthur’s chest, keeping them tight together as he gasped. “Wondering how many times I can get you to come for me.”

And of course this man would love to see him do that, love to see what he could do to John. And John held on to that, gripped tight onto Arthur’s hair, kept him tucked in between his neck, right where his teeth could graze and his tongue could suck into his skin. He felt like his feet were jack hammering. He paced a bit, unable to stop himself at the liquid promises that flowed from Arthur. God he wanted it. He panted in an echo, “Need you. C’mon.” Arthur raised his head, easily fighting off John’s grip, and tapped his lips with his left hand. 

“Get on the bed for me.”

Those words and that grip. The images came sudden and quick. Like, hell. The desire that was just spinning inside him and the images that chased that, of just sucking on the fingers that were tapping commands into his lips and getting choked them, just tasting sweat and musk and skin. A strange, alluring new way to take and claim. God. John couldn’t help it.

He grabbed at Arthur’s left hand and it brought it to his mouth. Arthur was confused, that little wrinkle in his eyebrow really cute and that downturn in his mouth and that tick in his jaw like how dare John not listen to him. And, hell, shattering that confusion with desire was just as cute, just as damn noteworthy as John brought one of those fingers to his lips and licked. They were innocent little nips, something slow and soft to get Arthur going from curious to ravenous. Just how he had sucked his cock. Started with the tip than delved in, aching for fullness. 

And that darkness in Arthur’s eyes, god, Earthy and muddy turned suffocating as John gave in, as he sucked on Arthur’s fingers, lapped at them and coated them with his tongue, with his spit. Swallowed around them, even. And that got Arthur moaning, got him twitching and heaving like he did when John swallowed his cock down. These little rumbles of thunder. Chased lighting as John looked at Arthur, begging the man to read him to-. There, there, there-.

Arthur shoved his fingers in a bit further just enough to get John choking and heaving on them. Tried more fingers too. Had three in John’s mouth and there, there-. John relaxed, let go of Arthur’s arm and let Arthur manhandle his mouth. Fuck christ. Full again. Yes. John closed his eyes, sucked as hard as he could on the skin of Arthur’s fingers and whimpered sadly when those fingers popped out of his mouth but jerked just as suddenly when wet, sticky fingers teased up against his pulse point saying pointedly stay and John did. He stayed still, letting his eyes flicker open to see Arthur watching him, panting with eyes blown as black as night. 

And he said, guttural, grounding out now, “Get on the bed.”

And John did.

And he watched, fascinated, as Arthur hovered to his left. He was curious as to what Arthur was gonna do, heaved in and out at the cool calmness, the heady, buzzing peace that Arthur exuded. Ached without his fullness, his warmth. Needed it near him soon. In him soon. Tried to get that peace Arthur gave out in waves. Heaved in, out, in, out, in-.

“Can you pull your legs up? To your chest? Can you do that for me, hm?” Arthur trickled his fingers like droplets of water from John’s heaving chest, to his peeked nipples, to the pretty column of his throat, and then to his lips, dipped his fingers in and tried a fumbling taste of, “Can you be a good boy for me?” with a little whisper of a thumb over John's pounding pulse.

John kept his gaze on Arthur as that name rattled in his head and the hold on his neck, soft, a whispery pressure consumed him. God. He hummed, something choppy and off key which tumbled into a moan as he sucked at Arthur’s thumb. He said, in between a lick and bite, “’M like that. Both. Please.” He didn’t even think, that name guiding him, those hands holding him down, thunder praising him, as he pulled his knees to his chest and held himself there.

Arthur smiled, soft and small, dripping with haziness. He dipped his fingers into the ginseng and slipped a sticky trail from John’s bruised hips to his trembling thighs, digging in here and there, kneading his hold into John’s skin. It made John buzz. It made him wiggle, just a bit, squirming under the waves that Arthur was putting him in and he stayed so taught yet so unable to hold in his shivers as Arthur dipped his fingers along the rim of his ass and then in. He fucked his fingers inside him in short little bursts. Explosions. 

John hummed. He needed those fingers deeper, needed more than just one, then two. Needed more fullness. More aches. He arched his back a little at the pressure, at the dizzying heat that pulsed rapid fire from his spine to his cock to his damn toes as Arthur pressed further in. More fingers. Two, three, and, shit, his hands were slipping from the back of knees which were getting too coated in sweat but trying his hardest to stay strong, to keep his hands there, to-.

One hand fucked him in bursts, hard and quick, dizzying dashes along his rim and then smooth, aching slides along his prostrate, and the other hand held him, softly not harshly, on his neck, keeping him still and taught, a thumb even daring to get kissed by John’s wandering tongue. 

Just held him down like an instrument to be played with, like a poker hand to win, like a shootout bursting with explosions and then the weird, calm peace of killing every last one of them and coming out on top as the winner, doused in blood and sweat and grime, sticky with it, then peace, stillness, a dizzying burst of smoke, of pines, of easing back the brush to the meadow, of hopping trains, finding words in between dusty slates, finding, finding-.

A single thumb swipe along his cock and a teasing lick to catch all his wetness. Gravelly hums that vibrated, that called him such a sweet boy, for going so taut and ready for him, for staying so still, for letting him see his scars, scars that Arthur smoothed over as he sucked out all the liquid from him, all the nightmares and all the bad that swirled and swirled a perpetual winter, and, fuck, yes, for finding him. Finding him. Finding, finding, finding-.

John came. Between a hard gasp and a stuttering exhale. Hard and guttural. He nearly screamed. It came ripping out of him and he convulsed with it. Snapped a bit on the bed only to be soothed by Arthur’s hands, one through his hair and the other skimming his aching rim in some strange lull that got him quiet. 

He turned into Arthur’s heat and opened sticky, salty eyes to see him looking at him like he was sunshine. Squinting at him as if he was a marvel. Unreal.

"Hm, gonna, uh, fuck me now, Arthur?” John asked.

Arthur smiled, something low and catching in the light, as he licked at John’s come on his stomach. John wiggled. Arthur said, “You think you’re ready?”

And John was.

Not for reality. 

But for this.

Forget.

He was here to forget.

Fuck all these bad parts, all that darkness, all that stupid fucking reality.

Fuck it all away. 

Boneless, John dragged Arthur in by his jaw, scratched through the beard there, and kissed away his come on his lips. He licked and licked, said with a punching breath, a heart shaped whisper of a chime, “Get my shirt.” 

When Arthur furrowed his brow at him, said, “Getting dressed already, darling?” His eyes were so scared, wide and sullen. 

John shushed him, replied, “Use it for leverage, idiot.” Gave him a wink. And in a push and pull, fire engulfed the blue in Arthur’s eyes. Smoldered it down to blackened ash. Arthur bit his lip, kissed him dry twice, three. Four. Five. A kiss over his scars. John wiggled at the over pulse of sensation there on marred and clawed skin and wiggled despite the vulnerability, the light that illuminated them, their embrace and their scars. Six. Seven. He shoved Arthur away, kicked him even to get him jump started.

It was comical to see Arthur’s lumbering form bolt around the room searching for the shirts. 

God. John laid on the bed. Boneless. Came so good, it felt like bursting. But he needed Arthur to make the final demand, to answer the final plea. Lay out all the bad parts in the shining lamp, see each other stripped so bare, see him too burst and pull apart, see John’s hands string them together again. 

Arthur finally came back with John’s shirt, kneeling on the bed in between John’s splayed legs. And Arthur looked so golden, cast in blonde and charming light that wasn’t bright but mellow and warm. Campfires in wide open spaces. Somehow caught between shadow and light. Two sides. 

John watched these sides meld into one person and he loved the look of Arthur, of these two sides no longer warring. Watched his hair slip down his forehead a bit. Getting too long there. And his beard, which was getting full enough to be scratchy against John’s skin. And the naked vulnerability that Arthur allowed John to see. See his strength, all them scars, and the little pudginess to him. Not a stick but a bear. If bears were loveable, stubborn, teasing idiots and not ones that would claw your eyes out. 

Hm. All this. For John. 

He grabbed the shirt bunched in Arthur’s hands, slipped it through his arms but leaving it unbuttoned. Arthur helped, yanking so the sleeves were down and then rendering the use of the shirt practically useless as he rolled the shirt up until it was caught by John’s armpits. John rose an eyebrow at that as Arthur probably could 'a left his shirt down for leverage was just as good but then, well, he got it when Arthur bunched it up and yanked John up. There was something about the fabric trapping him taught like this, more taught than he would’ve been if the shirt was down to his hips. And it was more than taut. It was a command. And John listened. He went. 

Arthur met his gaze, a smoldering, crooked smile laid to rest on his lips, and said, “Turn around, sweetheart.”

And, yes, John listened. He went. Arthur’s grip went lax and John turned to lay on his stomach. He startled. The sheets a shocking softness to the wetness of his stomach. Wet from his come. Wet from Arthur’s tongue. Had licked at every excess but left spitting marks behind. Jesus. John wiggled, his cock brushing hard and throbbing against the threads that seemed to itch there but seemed so soft elsewhere. A tango, a complex one of sensations like prickling pine and sweet ginseng, ginseng, gin-.

Arthur danced his fingers down to John’s rim, pressing and dipping along the skin, and then in, in, shoving past muscle and digging into the warm space. John arched his back. The pressure punching his spine and making him gasp, making him curl his hands into the sheets and bite moans into the fabric. 

Imagined how good Arthur would be at twirling a pistol, at duel wielding them like an angel of death. Deftly whipping the grave marker towards every target until they were gone in red, in oranges, in sunsets of ending. 

Jesus. Had them inside them now. One. Two. Three. Curling against that spot. Making John keen and whine but somehow getting him wilder, getting him to kick, as he spat, “Arthur, ‘m good. Just fuck me already.” He slid back on the bed, picked his ass up. And, finally, yes, yes, Arthur’s fingers slid from inside him to knead at his ass.

John waited in some strange silence.

Like he was waiting for the scratch of pen. That flower petal to droop and wither. 

Then, Arthur rocked inside him. Full. So fucking full. John bucked his hips back, chasing it, and screamed low, raspy, choking on feelings, on fullness, and aches, and slick sliding heat that throbbed inside him and kicked hard at his prostrate with every damn fucking rock. Arthur kept it slow, kept the movements going as if he was riding a horse at barely a trot. John felt broken in, felt taken apart as he inhaled, as he tasted salt, salt, so much salt dripping down his jaw, sticking to his hair, making the scars on his cheek red and puffy, and then, then-.

Arthur bunched his hands in the shirt that John had slipped on and used that leverage to fuck into him hard. Rough. Short. Explosions. Kept John against him. Kept him from flying right off the fucking bed. And John’s fucking everything got zapped, got melted and oozed out as Arthur fucked him so rough and hard as if this was the last, real, final time. As if this was the end. As if he thought he’d never get another chance like it. 

John lifted himself up, just a bit, to breathe past the knotted wave of his hair and fuck, fuck, Arthur had one hand in his hair, tugging his head back but not hard enough to snap it, and still one hand gripped his shirt. 

Arthur, low in his ear, a whisper on the wind, a chime of its own accord, something shivery amongst the cave walls, something dark beneath the drowning water, “Love how you feel, sweetheart.”

Fuck and John did. He knew Arthur did. Arthur’s cock was rubbing all the walls inside him, marking every bit of muscle with his leaking liquid. And John wiped at his eyes, his nose, his mouth. And he was drooling and he was spitting out words, praises, punchy little “Yes, yes, yes” and breathy pleas for more.

Arthur’s pace slipped, went back to smooth, soft rocking then skipped again to hard and quick explosions. John hiccupped and whined when Arthur suddenly slowed enough where he could press his heaving, sweaty chest against John’s back. Kisses. Heated and wet kisses shimmer simmered from the back of John’s neck. Hands lost grip on John’s shirt. John landed hard back on the bed. Unable to raise his ass or snap his spine back. Boneless. Arthur chuckled. A dark, thundering sound that promised lightning and floods. 

The kisses turned to bites turned to licks as Arthur coaxed John’s face from breathing in the sheets to breathing into Arthur’s mouth. They hovered there, panting in to each other’s open mouths. John watched, blearily, as Arthur’s dark eyes took every part of him, drank it like a dying man. 

“Jesus.” Arthur cursed, tangling his hands in John’s hair and smoothing a knot out. 

John swallowed. Somehow tumbled out a teasing, breathy, “This here Jesus wants you to come in me.”

Arthur rose an eyebrow as he chuckled, rolling his eyes a bit at John’s remark. “Yeah?” He kissed John’s sticky, salty cheek. “You sure?”

John nodded. “Yeah. Won’t hurt me. Want it.”

Arthur hummed, the vibrations a chilling claw of winter on John’s cheek. Arthur disappeared then, somewhere above him, and John relaxed into it, waited patiently for-.

The pace jumpstarted back to punishing thrusts and John, suspended, whined and moaned and clawed scars into the sheets. And, then, Arthur, grunting, and whispering quiet, punchy little gasps as he shoved in once, twice, and came. 

The rush of liquid was mewling, it made John feel warm and claimed. He felt like he couldn’t think. He ran his hands along his face. 

All he had left of him were pieces of sensations. Arthur running smoothing hands along his rim, keeping his come in there and even delving in for a quick taste. It was funny, feeling his tongue there. But the wetness made John’s cock twitch. God, he was dripping and he was wet. Fuck. Hands. Hands ran along his spine, leaving cooling shivers in their wake, stings of nails like the beard burn on his lips, and flipping, flipping. John was being flipped over. And fuck, fuck. Wet. Wet. 

Arthur sucked at his cock, humming and vibrating a damn pistol whipping, twirling rhytum on his cock and Arthur just watched him, watched as John, wet from tears, wet from drool, wet from all the liquid leaking from his ass, bowed off the bed and came for him in a screaming, unwinding sound. 

John cried and cried. He heaved and heaved. And Arthur kissed him. Licked away all the tears and wrapped his arms around his body which refused to do anything but become one with the dirtied sheets. God. 

John kissed Arthur, letting the man rub his stubble along his jaw in teasing scratches. John ran his hand through Arthur’s dark blonde hair and laughed. “I think you fucked my body out.”

Arthur’s laugh was so cute. It was shy and it was curling in. Small in between their bodies. This man. He had the nerve to look cute after fucking John’s head clear out the damn window. 

And sleep. God, sleep. It was coming over quickly like a drowning wave. And peace. God, peace. Peace smelled a lot like pine and ginseng. Smoke and whisky. Sweat and salt. And Arthur, singing to him something strange and alluring like shimmering meadows, like he’d heard it before coming from an open tent, and to his own ears as he tossed and turned in winter’s nightmares. 

And Arthur, always restless as if he was always itching for a pencil or a bow or a gun, danced his fingers along his cooling skin and John caved, he went, he gave and he fucking melted into Arthur, stayed there in this peace, this familiarity that felt like a thousand years weight. 

And he slipped into sleep.

Yes, he slipped, slipped, and found, found-.

+

John woke to burning aches that had obliterated every last sense he had. Well. If he had any to begin with.

But whatever. Point was that John wasn’t gonna be moving much. He simply groaned and rolled across the dirty sheets, lounging a bit in its threads, in its memories woven in, and then straight on to the floor. A heap of grumbled up mess. He wiggled a bit and he couldn’t help it. He smiled, the feeling creaking a bit and resounding through his heart, as he realized that Arthur had, sometime during the night or morning who knows, had cleaned him up, inside and out mind you. A gentleman.

John laughed.

What was he doing?

He covered his eyes and rubbed out the images.

Here, now, thinking of Arthur again, he realized that it was too quiet.

The stranger gone.

Probably off to some other no name town.

He huffed into the gritty floorboards and spat out chunks of dirt and mud. Bleh. He chased fingers up his throat, shivered a bit at the thought of those hands against him, inside him, then gripped at the boards and heaved himself along the floor to the window. On the way across, he saw the journal, the piece of paper with all the numbers scrawled over them with little cursive loops tied into notes. 

The stranger had stayed.

And he wrote like a damn song, them fancies ones you’d hear from rich people’s houses, the songs of childhoods and futures that you could only dream about.

John groaned.

Was anything about this stranger not delicious? Not-.

Sweet jesus.

John heaved himself up, even as his spine ached and his ass clenched at the movement, and leaned against the dresser which was nicely set into the corner so he could peak through the window to the glaring, bustling world outside. And there his stranger was. Arthur. Knightly Arthur doing, well, god.

He was waving at all the people. Curling his hand up for them. Even giving those who wobbled a hug or a dollar. Or both. It was totally both. Then, he turned, sure and slow in his movements as if he had days to cherish said day and wasn’t running or gunning to run. 

Arthur smoothed his horses’ mane, spoke to her so soft and low John reckoned, and gave her oatcakes and apples and little nuzzles. Those same hands which had worked over John just the same. And, okay, a little weird to compare himself to a horse but goddamn that man could work those hands, that voice, his hips, that…everything.

John huffed and he puffed. He hung his head. His hair, all tangled and knotted, matted from his tears and Arthur’s tugs, swung down to encase him in a deep dark hole and he closed his eyes and stayed there, resting in this image of this night with some stranger which turned out to be one of the worst things he could’ve ever done.

Because once he had a taste, he was gone.

His heart…he pressed a hand there, where it beat and rattled so fast and yet so offbeat, so…just off as it were feeling it there, creating its own damn drumline. His lungs heaved. They too were caving or aching or…who knows what.

John didn’t know what this was.

Chasing a deer across the hills, the wide-open plains. Chasing what nature carved. 

Chasing something dark only to see it lit up in the lamp light, to see it stripped bare for you.

This familiarity. 

The unwinding of dreams and love’s blazing state of mind.

And this wallowing in some corner in some salon in some town after some stranger. 

Resounding, thundering steps. Sure, strong feet crossing stairs and floorboards. It wasn’t like how John dragged himself across the floor. This man was different. He was confident. But he wavered too. So…complex.

John squeezed his eyes harder, tried to connect all these differing images. A man who toyed him so well, fine tined him even but turned all doe eyed and blushed when John reached for him, grabbed him, and told him he wanted to suck every drop from him and how gorgeous Arthur was and how he was good, how Arthur thought that was all loose talk, not true. Yeah, right. 

John shook his head.

Then, the door creaked open.

John peaked through his hair at Arthur, at the man dressed to the nines again. The same dusty jeans but a different buttoned-down shirt. Stripes, again. Muted blacks and grays and greens of pines. 

John swallowed hard. “What’s that?”

“Got you a comb. Figured you’d never seen a damn thing like it.” 

John growled a bit. “I’ve seen ‘em.”

Arthur nodded, waving his hands about like he thought John was lying. Then, those hands got busy, tugging John to sit on the bed. Nearly stark-naked mind you. Except for the button-down shirt. Which John unbunched so it could sit like a normal shirt. Although the wrinkles and tugs in it made it utterly useless for a shirt’s purpose but for others….well. 

Arthur’s eyes roamed and John shivered as Arthur took every little detail in him, as he wished and hoped that Arthur was thinking of last night, of everything that had happened. John should’ve felt exposed. He should’ve kicked and spat at having someone push in and settle in so damn easy, so damn quickly but with Arthur…jesus, John didn’t know how to explain it.

Arthur calmed him. Just a bit. Still-.

“C’mon old man, you gonna look all day or are you gonna use that damn thing you’ve been so proudly toting around?” 

‘Thing’ had a heavy implication. John looked down at said possible inclination. That gun belt, hung so lowly on Arthur’s hips, captured every bit of him. But Arthur tsked, teased him just as good, as he tilted John’s wondering head back up to meet his fiery gaze, to kiss him soft, slow. Calm the wildness. John’s fingers twitched. He ached to tug Arthur in by that stupid gun belt but then Arthur would’ve won. Stupid.

John bit Arthur’s bottom lip, tugged a bit and sucked, before he took that comb that was barely being held in Arthur’s grasp and reached for his own hair. He bent back a bit, grabbing a few ends and tugging at the knots with the teeth of the comb. Holding it kept the pain from biting him but Arthur must’ve tangled his hair so badly that he could barely get it through. Hands gripped his knees, a warm, tight squeeze, before those same strong, warm hands grabbed his wrist and stopped him.

John looked at Arthur, at that swirling sea of many colors, many complexities, and…

Gave in. 

He leaned back, let Arthur coax the comb into his grasp, let this man lay his hair in his palm, in between bits of skin that were bit at by who knows what, holding ropes or chopping wood or knifing some guy’s stomach. Which. Okay. That made John all shivery. Knowing that this man held so much strength within him but was still somehow so gentle. Complexities. Eased John and the knotted strands of his hair into smoothness so easily.

Watching Arthur pick and prod was less startling than the words would’ve entailed. It was like…

John was entranced.

Naked. His ass on dirty sheets. His knees splayed so Arthur, fully clothed mind you which was a raw enough detail to get John whimpering, could kneel on the floor and squeeze in between him. Those hands cradling his hair and somehow getting them to listen to the comb, to his touch. 

Vulnerable.

Okay, now, John was feeling it.

He needed…

His hands were shaking.

He was breathing too heavily.

Forests.

Something about riding and hopping trains. And flowers pressed between pages. And numbers sticking out. And something about witches and prophecies and things that roamed the forest floor. That soared even higher than the birds.

He was-.

“Here. Quit you’re damn wiggling and do something.”

John twisted the bow around until he could get the strings on right. He raised an eyebrow at Arthur, “This ain’t poison ones are they?”

Arthur glanced at him, a glint that shimmered shine, “Nah, never.”

John huffed. He almost snapped the bow in half as he grumbled out, “Isn’t this weird for ya? Like we just…okay, we fucked last night and, then this.” He set the bow on his knee. The wood to naked skin jarred him a bit. The smoothness, the weight of it, the man that carried it, his soul somehow woven in. He frowned at the damn thing. He was so…attached. Like needy. What was this? What were they? Why was he so dizzy, unable to see the fuller picture? Something reeling him into the darkness and whispering, no screaming, now so guttural and raw, that he wasn’t looking, that-. It just tumbled out, it-. “This feels like we’ve been fucking and running for years or something.”

Being honest felt a lot like throwing up. And being naked on top of it didn’t help. John wanted to curl in, to look away, to douse himself in black hair and become one with darkness. To snap and pour out fire. To howl at the dashing moon. 

But Arthur was in between his legs, warm, strong, and soft. Just…damn Arthur was so good looking. And…and soft…and-. He was just combing his hair like it was a marvel, like how he looked at John after he came from being finger fucked and held down. Unreal.

Then, those eyes, green now, looked at him and John choked. “I don’t think you’d believe me if I told ya.” 

John tsked at that. “Look, you’re about the damn prettiest thing I’d ever seen. And the kindest so-.”

“Not kind. Not good.” Arthur shook his head, cleared his throat. John watched the muscles in his jaw tick, tighten. Watched him swallow hard. The biggest, heart shaped lump there ever was. Watched Arthur’s fingers twitch like they wanted to grip on to the strands of John’s hair and pull hard. Fingers that, more than likely, itched for a journal more than this. Or, hell, a trigger. 

John frowned. “I ain’t been with you long but-.”

Arthur reeled back. 

John hadn’t even said nothing incriminating but Arthur looked at him like he was…a shattered mirror. 

“Put some pants on for fucks sakes.” The words got ground out, lost between exhales as Arthur let go of John’s hair and stood. John watched him turn, all tense like, so unlike his usually confident, loud strides and then to his journal, which he cradled just as gently as John’s hair, John’s skin, John’s everything.

And okay. Well. 

That didn’t mean John couldn’t bitch about it. “Being all honest with ya and look what ya give me. Nothing. So stupid and-.” He shoved his pants on, grunting, “Stubborn. Like a damn horse refusing to break. Or some idiot who refuses to listen to your warnings before you just shoot him so he could shut the fuck up and learn a lesson. Stupid. And…and stupidly pretty but so stupid and-.”

A kiss.

John jolted.

He was so busy with the task at hand. Had barely even zipped his jeans up. Now had his ass on the bed again with Arthur in between his legs again. Got lost somewhere between the command and the bitching that he didn’t hear Arthur. Or maybe Arthur, big old lumbering man, could be silent when he needed to be. And that shouldn’t send shivers of molten lantern heat down John’s spine. But it did. And he nearly whined, the sound getting pressed, trapped between them as Arthur kissed his bottom lip, sucked on the skin, then kneaded fingers into John’s jaw to get him to open his mouth for him. And John did. He did.

Arthur’s tongue swept broad stripes through his mouth. Wet heat that tasted like coffee and apples. Sweet and bitter. Complexities in every bit of Arthur. The whine now was back and was tumbling and rattling between them. Arthur sucked on the taste of it, the syllables and consonants getting trapped on John’s tongue. He heaved up, just a bit, needing Arthur to feel this goodness, this kindness that John saw, that Arthur for some stupid reason wouldn’t fucking believe.

But why did John care? 

And how come John could read it so easily as if this was a decades long argument and not a new piece of information? 

His hands scrambled all jittery like because he couldn’t stop the shimmer shake of these thoughts. He tried his hardest to map out Arthur’s body. Moved from his shoulders where the muscles there tingled under John’s touch, and then to the back of the man’s neck. John pressed there, keeping Arthur in his mouth, keeping Arthur tucked all around him. It shouldn’t be so good. It shouldn’t feel so decades long. It shouldn’t be. It-.

Air was demanded and Arthur broke the kiss. John’s lips, already sore and red, were back to swollen and covered in spit. He swallowed Arthur’s taste and leaned in for more but…this look in Arthur’s eyes, swimming now between Earth and grass, mud and trees, stopped him.

They begged him to listen to something.

John narrowed his eyes and finally, finally let memory poke into his consciousness and burst through like bullet shattering into brain. 

Yes, now, forget everything that had fucking happened and think John. Can you think? Can you really possess such a thing, such a, jesus in your hands, it was a far out reach talent. 

Can you really think hard on this, take all the pieces, and make sense of it?

John ran a hand from his face. Sweat. Caked in. Bit at skin from Arthur’s marks, his hands, his tongue, his push and pull kisses. Sweet molasses. He ran a hand down his chest. His lungs were heaving and his ribs ached from holding in its swollenness. He pressed nimble fingers that jittered their own song against his pounding heart that beat off and on, on and off, a not beat and then a hard thump.

He tried to hold on to reality, to the feel of his heart, his kicking lungs, his heaving stomach. Metal on his belt. Cold. The wind biting its charming chime into his naked skin. Naked. He didn’t have a shirt on. But he had jeans. He nipped his bitten nails into its holes, its threads.

Dreams unwound just as easily as its threads. 

Love curling into its recesses just as easily.

And yet.

And yet.

Just as hard to find.

But had John found it?

Had found it in…yes.

Had found it in this hotel room.

And somehow in other places, felt like decades together and yet decades apart. 

Same…feeling. Yes. And same…same-.

And it came to John now, of reading maps and stories through the slits in railroad cars, in dusty light and in the pull of the silvery moon. Escapist shit that kept him going through all the tragedy and all the grave markers and all the howling wolves at his heart’s door. 

But why graves?

And why wolves?

Why pines and ginseng and smoke?

And why the familiarity interlaced in every interaction with Arthur who was supposed to be just some stranger?

Just images and feelings that came and went without any real attachment to them. No explanation.

John scrambled and Arthur caught him, kept him upright and close to him as he said, somewhere between dizzying images and thoughts without the lightning of enlightenment, “It was a curse. Some old…fucking rat-.” The word got spat out, heart drunk, spun from the ravaged mind. “I told Dutch a thousand times he was bad and Hosea agreed with me but that wasn’t enough for ‘ol Dutch. He pushed and pushed and look at what happened. I-. God. John.” Arthur’s head rested on John’s heart and John reached, shakily and distant, to run a hand through blonde locks dirtied with brown. Even nature coated his hair. “Micah was a rat and a demon and he cursed us all to Hell. He…he took your memory. He-.” Confession ground out in between spaces of shivery breaths, “He took you from me. For a whole fucking year, you were gone. And, he, just-. Made you forget everything. Turned everyone else he could into animals, called us, fucking called us animals, can you believe that when he was the rat?”

John gripped Arthur’s hair then relaxed.

The name spun and spun.

To the tune of whistling, sticky pines. 

To the tune of howling wolves at full moons.

To the tune of bounding deer bending to drink, raising their heads to stare with goodness in their eyes, with nature as their guide. 

Take me to the sky high.

Take me-.

Take me where memory comes back.

Take me there.

Arthur god, please.

John screamed.

Saw it all burst through him. 

Drowned in it.

The memories. God, no. No. No. He heaved, “Abigail? Jack?”

Arthur’s hands shushed him. His mouth kissed his neck. “They escaped before he could do anything.”

That…peace. John squeezed his eyes. Forced the salt back. 

Abigail pulling her hair up into a bun, shimmering and shining in a black and white field, continuing on and powering through powdery soft grass as Jack chased circles around her with his books about fantasies. 

And above them, circling them like hawks. The rat. The demon. The curse. 

The lion roaring on the mountainside. 

Guided by the hands of the angel of death riding the white horse in fake innocence.

The wolves that had tried to take John, tried to tear him apart only to land in Arthur’s arms. All them failed and botched jobs. All the hounding for gold and money, killing all senseless like, and all for things that didn’t, that shouldn’t have ever fucking mattered. All them wrongs you can’t right. All the love you wouldn’t’ve been able to have. 

Of course a man of magic, a devil’s counterpart got ‘em. They were foolish. Running around with their heads cut off. No surprise there.

It almost felt like saving, what Micah did. Stopping it before it had gotten worst. John felt sorry sick thinking like that but he couldn’t help it. The wolves had taught him that there’d always be something worse waiting to chew you, to burn you. The wolves had taught him what nightmares meant, that sleep could be a wasteful, far away craving. The wolves had dared him to try to run again, to try to…to try to love and hope again. To rise again. 

And John’s hands, shaking now with nightmarish excess that dripped from these memories and explanations, slipped to Arthur’s shirt, bunching the fabric and yanking. “What the fuck happened? Arthur, what the fuck happened?”

Arthur said, “He got us at Horseshoe Overlook. Got some out. I couldn’t-.” He leaned back, pinched his nose. “Shouldn’t’ve let that rat outta Strawberry. Should ‘a just let him rot. Hell, he probably could ‘a let himself out what with his magic or whatever he has.” 

The guilt stunk between them. Guilt and shame from following the orders of a madman. Saving Micah in jail. The jail didn’t even want him. Hell, the devil probably didn’t want him neither. Probably spat him up to Earth to do whatever he pleased just so he would stop pestering the devil. 

John shook his head, forced out, “Arthur, shut the fuck up. You did everything for us.” Heaved in then out the truth, “You did too much. ‘M sure no one blames you but you.” Tugged him in for a hard kiss. “You stubborn shit.” Arthur’s eyes, sad, drowning blue, frowned just as strong as his lips, as the wrinkles in his eyes. John smoothed them with his fingertips and it was strange now, touching Arthur like this as the memories shimmered and burst through John’s consciousness, as they came pouring in. Coupled and melded now with their fucking. 

He kissed Arthur, everything in him shaking and yearning for it. And he laughed, sorrowful, “Could ‘a had this for a bit.” 

Arthur chuckled, although it sounded worn like he too had told himself a thousand times in front of a shattered mirror, in the dark, the curling, cursing dark. A whole fucking year without this. Lost. Trying to find John. John, wayward, hopping trains and living on the teeth of survival. By nature’s grace, he supposed, did they end up here, did they find each other.

Then, Arthur quieted, and just watched John with sky and pines and mud. Watched and held him there, suspended. John cradled Arthur’s jaw, and dragged his thumbs through the hair and the scars. This man. This stupid fucking man, this-.

Oh.

John paused, everything in him buzzing as he came to not a question but a statement. He could see it now, the way Arthur bounced between holding back and needing John to be near him. And oh. Oh. He raised an eyebrow at the older man, said, “’S all complex and fucked ain’t it?” A curse had drawn them apart, shrouded John in memories lost. But returned, feeling it on the wind the man he needed, the man he was so happily still in tuned to. It was fantastical, seemingly only for novels. And when Arthur didn’t even chuckle, John barreled on, “I wanted it Arthur. Even if…” Lies wasn’t the right word but John didn’t know what else to call it. He chewed and chewed on his bottom lip. “It doesn’t matter what you knew or what I knew or what the whole fucking town knew. I wanted it then. I’ll always want it.”

Because now he knew that Arthur had spent the time outside with his horse simmering in shame because if you knew something the other doesn’t, was your time with them actually agreed upon, was it actually true and real? Or god-. Of course. 

Arthur let John have his way and relented even because it made John happy. Who cares if Arthur felt so in pain, in shattering knowing what John didn’t and knowing that in that moment, John wouldn’t’ve gotten it? It was like Arthur would ‘a thought John would’ve left, that he would’ve found it disgusting that they had fucked with this strange curse shrouding them, that maybe John hadn’t been in his right mind. That it was John in curse that loved him, not both. No, John wouldn’t have that. He cursed out strong and quick, “I know I want you. But what do you want Arthur?” Because he had to be sure. It had to be said. John could feel the answer in rolling waves on his skin, in Arthur’s kisses but he needed to hear it, even if-. In an echo of before, in an echo of everything, in-. “Don’t care if you hurt me. Tell me.”

They hadn’t ever been this honest but it was time for it. 

Arthur blinked at him, all the words going into his head and sticking. He blinked and puffed out harsh breaths. Perplexed. Everything in him wide eyed with wonderment. He whispered, “Just worried, I supposed. Just thought…that you wouldn’t have me after all the truth came out.”

John rolled his eyes. “Idiot.” But that didn’t answer John’s question, that didn’t-.

Arthur smiled. Really smiled. Soft and-. “I want you. Always have, I guess.” And muddled. Drenched in the waters of their remembrance, in their embrace. John rocked a bit, thinking of it now, thinking of Arthur wanting him, that them fucking wasn’t just Arthur giving him what he wanted in that moment, that maybe guilt and shame could subside and they could rest easy knowing the truth between them which became a sweet, melding foundation for their love. Always. 

And for good measure, he nipped Arthur’s jaw and punctuated it with a quick, sharp, “’M not regretting a damn thing.” He bit and bit, sucked and sucked at skin and smiled, all teeth and candor, at Arthur’s restless hands gripping his hair to pressing against the skin of his neck. 

Arthur held him and his body racked. He grumbled out, “You sure that…” He trailed off, restarted, still not getting it, as his eyes danced away from John. And John wouldn’t have that. He used his grip on Arthur’s jaw to center him back on him and forced Arthur to keep their gaze. A spell. A dance. A-. “You’ll have me?”

John nodded. Without hesitation. “Always.”

Arthur chewed on his bottom lip, those restless hands of his dancing along John’s spine. “You said that when…when-.” John coaxed the words out with swirls of his thumb, with his eyes that watched him, took him in even as the bad parts spilled out between them. “When Micah got you, you told me that and then you were gone. And I was in this farm, this weird little place and, god, you would ‘a loved it. He turned Dutch and Hosea into cats and Charles and Sadie got to be horses.” John laughed, shaking his head because of course. It was dark to laugh at a curse but John couldn’t help it. Imagining a pissed off and sore Dutch as a cat was perfect. It’d shut him up at least. And he deserved it too. For not listening to Arthur, to Hosea. The only good damn pieces among the gang, and, well, Charles too. And god him as a horse made sense. Sadie as one, though. She’d be a wild one for sure. Arthur even laughed with him, the sound teetering out as he added, “’M made sure everyone else got out. And I…I, uh, checked on Abigail and Jack. They were okay.” 

There was something there, a story. John raised an eyebrow. “She didn’t throw something at you?”

Arthur said tightly, “God, no. She was…she cried a lot.”

There was a biting weight there.

John had left before, for a year. Always running away from things. Whenever things got scary, he got cornered and he bolted. But that was one of the most foolish things he’d ever done. Abigail and him hadn’t been right since. Love was there but it was buried in so much shit now. All them graves of their love buried by John’s stained hands. Tried his hardest to amend, to ensure that he paid attention to them, loved them still in familial way, and watched over them. Protected them. It was all he could offer. The last pieces of himself to her. Imagined her holding them to her chest just as tight as Jack held his fantasy books. 

John frowned. His heart kicked at that, like Jack chasing circles around his mother, like the rough ground he chased on. “I should go see them.” Then, curious, he asked, “What about the others? Think the curse lifted for them too?”

Arthur tilted his head. “’M not even sure what lifted yours.”

And John, roaring headfirst, just as Abigail did as she spun and fought in his mind, for herself, for them, for everyone, said, “Well, c’mon, we’re wasting daylight here. Let’s go.”

And go they did to fix the seemingly unfixable.


	2. by nature's grace

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John joins Arthur at the farm. 
> 
> Then, joins Arthur in a heart to heart that leads to something more as well as a possible end to the curse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **All tags and warnings still apply**
> 
>  
> 
> I may add more to this series as the emotional tug was calling me more than the logistics of it. No surprise there, really. 
> 
> And thank you again to everyone who has given this little thing some love! <333.

Looking out for love  
In the night so still  
Oh, I'll build you a kingdom  
In that house on the hill

You said that you love me  
And that you always will  
Oh, you begged me to keep you  
In that house on the hill 

I wake up  
Alone with it all  
I wake up  
But only to fall

-Big Love - Fleetwood Mac

+

John leaned forward and sucked in smoke.

He watched dutifully, sitting as close to Arthur as he could on the barely dry Earth, up against the barn wall, as Arthur leaned back, his throat exposed in that strange manner he does. Puffing on the cigarette in his mouth. Watched and watched even as Hosea’s claws dug into his shoulders. He winced a bit, turning to catch Hosea’s blinking eyes at him. The cat was close, laying all curled up on his shoulder. Small enough to fit even on John’s smaller frame. And Hosea was alive and well, breathing and purring against John and watching him just as much as John watched Arthur.

John turned his eyes from Hosea to the land beyond them, past the circle of pines like soldiers to the plains rolling with forest nestled in around them like bandages. And somewhere in that fenced in wild, Sadie was kicking up dust and pissing off and showing up all the wild horses. And Charles, nearer to them than her, watched her, both bemused and cautious John supposed. It was strange to see them in horse form. All dappled with different colors.

And Dutch was even weirder as a cat. All bristly and black. John would never forget Dutch’s screeching when John had walked in the door after that long trip from the random hotel in that random town and how fast he had bolted. Just a black, vibrating blur. How Arthur said that was Dutch on the daily. Screeching and running and preaching. Human or cat form, didn’t matter. That was Dutch. All noise, no bite. All them botched plans. Even cat form couldn’t stop that. So, yeah, “’S a little weird.”

Arthur laughed, full and loud. “You tell me. I had a whole year to get used to it and I still ain’t.”

John felt cold, felt its chill. He snuffed the end of the cigarette with his boot, let the embers be still. But they wouldn’t quit their shivering in his heart, in his head. Ground. Earth. He squeezed his eyes shut and remembered hitting the ground hard outside a train and having his head get smacked into darkness. Then had awakened to a random, dusty town with even dustier people.

He coughed. It rattled Hosea who had happily climbed on to John’s shoulders while Dutch ran and hid somewhere. And cheerful it was for Hosea as he mercilessly dug his claws into John’s skin. Now, he chirped in annoyance, his cream and gray fur shaking with its rumbles. Eventually, they would need a cure for the curse. But where to start with that? And, god, it was just that and everything else that had happened between him and Arthur and he felt like he was right back at the start, dizzying and lost.

And John tried to settle. He did. But he couldn’t. He said, “Micah kicked me out a train, I think.” Arthur paused and in the smoke curling around him, John saw glimpses of tension, of him startling into a delicate, petal worthy pause. It felt so…thick here. And heated. John pulled his shirt down, then gave up and kept his fingers there, in a half tugging need at his collar. He laid his chin on his knuckle and tried to parse through all the muck in his head. Continued, “Got lost in some shithole desert. Followed trains back to here.”

He remembered cliffs. Not mountains. Hot cliffs that reminded John of sparks from guns, rising like the gang to capture a train. Caught John in between them as he struggled to climb them, to steal a horse to get around them. To get to wherever he was hoping to wander too. Just…followed….a-.

Hosea leaped off his shoulder.

Dutch screeched somewhere in the background at Hosea’s more than likely purposeful run into his body.

And with the screams and the memories came a-. “Feeling. It was some feeling that carried me. I don’t know what.”

Then the smoke of aching memory cleared and John met Arthur’s eyes which held him suspended. They looked sad again, blue now, deeper and darker than ever. Like the fog rolling around them thick with the heat of the day, the heat between them it seemed. And the sullen grayness that leaked from the clouds that moved just as slowly as pencil on paper. Little scratches. Dark and inky. All that in Arthur. All that between them.

Then, quietly, “I told nature about a thousand times to find you.”

John’s fingers let go of his shirt.

“John, you wouldn’t get it. I-.”

And John lost it.

“Get what? The fucking truth? Who cares.” Angry now. Bitter. As course as desert sand. Silence rolling by on the dusty wind. Chasing it to the end, to the startling change in the seasons, to the calm peace of something familiar. Bit out in a teeter, “I’m not that same little kid that you hated, Arthur.”

Because Arthur had hated him, right?

He was the snot nosed kid who he had to get stuck with. Here, Arthur, take this kid and make something of ‘em. Forced to. Right?

Then, John had left.

He had bolted because that was what he was. A runner and a gunner. Run and hide because that’s better than having to deal with the consequences of feeling. Shove all those grisly and deformed feelings, god as appalling and harrowing as scars, down into the deep, dark depths. Put your guard hair on, honey, to protect the soft downy beneath. Don’t even let them know you have it. So, yes, settling wasn’t a word he read. It wasn’t a word he knew. Hell, it wasn’t worth even looking at.

But, then he grew, got forced to nourish.

And learned that what he had done was beyond a mistake. It was beyond a misunderstanding. It was all John’s fault and it would always be John’s. John always fucked up. Just put it on the board already along with all the others, the hundreds of others.

And Arthur would be the one tacking those up. Right?

But Arthur had grown too.

Had…

Had loved John in ways that John would never understand nor ever feel like he deserved.

And Arthur. God, Arthur. He-.

“Oh, c’mon, I didn’t hate you.” Rolled John’s bitterness off his shoulders, chided him even, just like when he had slowed their kisses down, calmed the wildness. Except. This time it had really, really grinded against John. He shifted. Harshly. Digging his knee into the meat of Arthur’s thigh, watched Arthur kinda wince a bit. Away from him. Tried to anyway. But John was bitter. He was pouring forth with it. Busted glass and fucking wolves’ claws and god fucking damn he had a whole damn year in that stupid hot, never ending desert to dizzily follow some chime on the wind that told him to go East. Had followed nature like a love sick fool and landed here. To this.

Like fucking hell he was gonna watch Arthur disappear into his pretty built cave and let him cower.

No.

This was not Arthur’s journal. This. God. “You did. Don’t go telling me no different!” Then, sharp. “When I left, when you saw me on that mountain, if the wolves didn’t fucking kill me, you would ‘a done it. You would ‘a finished the job. Why didn’t you, Arthur? Huh?” He rubbed at his eyes, at salt threatening to spill. Not now. Not when Arthur thought he was not worthy of his confessions, his truth.

John wasn’t Arthur’s journal. God, though, did he not deserve Arthur’s everything? Bad parts. C’mon, the bad parts. Please. He said, so raspy and chittering with cracks, “Don’t go being silent on me, Arthur. Don’t go lying on me neither. Please.”

Because he needed this.

Fuck out all the bad parts.

Turn the lamp on.

He thought he had seen Arthur when they had fucked but all he had seen was his skin.

And John was crowding in now.

Both knees planted hard and bony and thin against Arthur’s thighs, thighs that, okay, John really, really wanted to tongue and bite but now wasn’t the time. Not when he was practically shaking, just throwing his hands each way, here and there, from his hair which he twirled and yanked around his fingers to kneading the bone of his knee to dancing then pausing above Arthur’s thigh. He leaned in. Couldn’t help it. Just couldn’t. But did. Did. Because he always did. Always bolted.

Now, to Arthur, he’d bolt.

He grabbed Arthur’s knee with his left hand, kneaded it there and kept it there even as Arthur startled, even as he gasped, even if he dared to twitch. In a rhythmic response, John, then, dug his forehead into Arthur’s shoulders, those shoulders built from gunfights and hunting and building, from all that pressure he had put on his shoulders. Yes, pressed in and littered cloth with barely held back tears. Feel what your silence does to the one who’d swear to love you up and down, through and out.

And Arthur said, wildly slow, menacingly soft, “More than anything, I want to.”

God. Just-. “We ain’t got time for this. Not now.” And not then. Not ever.

Grasped for straws, for diversions. “What about Abigail?”

John wiped his head up, all narrowed eyes and bristled like a prey animal. Like a true wolf. He snarled, “What about her?” He kicked Arthur straight in the shin and smiled, all teeth, rabid, at Arthur’s yelp and his glare. His pretty, drowning blue glare. Feel it. Feel as angry. As pent up. C’mon, this was decades worth. When will it stop?

John added, with a bruising grip on Arthur’s jaw, keeping him tight and close, “Same as you and that girl. Mary. Or whatever. It don’t matter now, not as much as you do, as much as this. Us.” Mary. What a fucking idiot. To let Arthur go. And, okay, look, John had done it too but he was begging for Arthur now. She wouldn’t want the bad parts. No, she wouldn’t’ve have loved him like John could. But that was spun all green and sorry sick. John let that rolling wave go, focused back on what was in front of him, what had been right in fucking front of him since the damn beginning. Took it. It was his damn it.

He looked at this man. Arthur was glaring hard at him. There was an angry tick to the permanent sadness in his eyes. There was a twitch in his stressed jaw. Hands on his thighs, right near to John’s hands on his knees. Clenched.

Rip everything fucking open.

John coaxed, “’S all you. You tell me or I leave.”

This was it. This-.

Arthur grasped John’s jaw, smoothing his hands up until he was cradling John like a blooming flower, a kind he’d lovingly pluck and press into his journal to keep forever. Open mouthed, they panted in this tiny, barely there space between them. John didn’t lean forward. But he did shiver at Arthur’s touch. He did raise his head up so he could watch Arthur spin and spin around him. Spin and spin. And land and land and-.

“’M so sorry, John.” John blinked at that. Then, “I did hate you. There were a lot ‘a moments like that. But I was young and a-. I was a fool. I think mostly…mostly I just hated myself and I was…I was so afraid.”

Arthur’s words….god. John reached for him, slid his hands up from Arthur’s knee to wrap his arms around his neck, tangled his fingers in the whisper of hairs there, and heaved in, out when Arthur’s hands responded to his movements and slid down to hold him up, right above his ribs. John liked that spot. Shivered more now as Arthur’s confession landed gently in his heart and rattled it to throbbing life.

He dared to ask, “Afraid of what?”

Arthur laughed. But it was cracked. As shattered as mirrors. John watched those blue depths get dark with it like a storm coming up to consume. “Everything, I suppose. God, especially after all that Micah business.”

John couldn’t even nod at that. He had no idea what Arthur had done to get through that year with all that knowledge and truth residing in him and without John and without Hosea, without anyone really save for the animals who you could talk to and get a feeling response but not a spoken one.

John ran his hands to Arthur’s chest, smoothing out dirty wrinkles and letting the movement coax the words out, “Well, I can’t take all that away so…” He shrugged. He was at such a loss here. And Arthur was still so sorry sick, looking out at the rolling fog now, then at the clouds, squinting at the bits of sun that tried their hardest to peak out through the towering waves of black water.

“I had accepted it. But it was hard.” Arthur looked back to him, something settling there that John couldn’t name. And John could see. Could see Arthur pouring everything into acceptance, into a ‘this might as well happen’ and channeling that into building what was around them. The house. The farm. The garden. The preserves in the kitchen. Hammered in posts to the tune of one less thought about what had happened, about how much he desperately yearned for it to have never happened at all.

Arthur added, “Ever since you’d left the first time, I’d ‘a never stopped thinking of ya.” Pressed his thumbs along John’s lips, begged them to open for him and John did, of course, leaning in now for that kiss, for that-.

Arthur kissed him slowly. Kept them pressed together with barely a movement in between. Then, sucked on his bottom lip and lavished it with his tongue. John gasped, letting that tongue in to claim. Their tongues met and it was slick and it was heated. Muggy. Sucking and teasing and rolling together in each other’s mouths. Tasting coffee and apples and smelling pines and smoke. Tasting a year of loneliness that spilled into their mouths, down their throats, and to their pitter patter hearts that followed the leap of the deer, the prowl of the wolf.

Feeling it now what they’ve missed. John pulled back, letting Arthur just hold his dizzying self up. Hands on his ribs. Caging him in. And Arthur’s eyes watching him. And Arthur’s kisses smoothing out his wild into a dreamy, sticky rhythm.

Then, in this lull, John pushed Arthur back, back, until he was lying down on the Earth.

Arthur looked pretty like this. Pillowed by Earth, by his maker, by his embodiment, all dusty blonde hair and gorgeous blue that swung to green, that sometimes got hints of gold. Gold. Here, pretty baby, was your gold. Didn’t need to look in the hills. It was here.

John pressed a hand above Arthur’s heart and watched Arthur blink up at him. Watched, startled, as John kissed the cloth there and said, softly in a daring rasp, “You’re everything, Arthur.” And the words weren’t much because he wasn’t a poet, not like how Arthur could spin them words and drawings. But he had one single word to encapsulate Arthur.

Everything.

Oh, and, uh, “Forever.” Sealed it with a nipping bite that jolted Arthur into moving. Hands, rapid as a match to wood, ruffled up his shirt and smoothed over John’s spine. Arthur even arched for him, listened to John so well as John moved his mouth around his chest.

Through cloth, John wet the threads and sucked hard on Arthur’s nipple. Arthur groaned for him, the sound so unwinding, so-.

John ran his left hand up, up, until he reached for Arthur’s shirt collar. Yanked and yanked until the buttons got ripped, flew away. Laughed joyously and free when Arthur growled angrily at him, a sharp “Hey” which got ripped, flew away when John lapped at Arthur’s skin free now and revealed to him. All of it.

Arthur trembled beneath him and this was strange, this was different and new. John had sucked Arthur when he was standing. Fucking hell, he should’ve sucked him down for all he had with Arthur beneath him. Arthur was so…wiggly. And wild. Like this is where it all went. All that he had held back now revealed and out. Free.

John used his right hand to hold Arthur down by his hips. But that and John’s tongue on his stomach lavishing and dipping down to his waistband got him kicking. John moved, chose to straddle Arthur’s right leg as he bent to continue his wet ministrations.

Dragged his fingers down, down beneath the waistband.

The slap on his wandering fingers was jarring.

John sat back, startled, only to laugh, loud and full, as Arthur unzipped his own pants. “In a hurry?” John teased.

For that, he got a glare and hands on his throat, whisper thin just like the noise that tumbled out of John’s mouth. God. Arthur still could play him. A game between them. A push and pull that was heady. God, heat was okay here. Desert was fine. In Arthur’s arms, of course.

John hummed, the sound choppy and pressed away by Arthur’s hold on his neck, on that dark, dark blue that was swirling something fierce and towering and consuming.

Follow the sound on the wind.

Follow, follow.

Bend, bend.

Still, still.

John remained there, prettily frozen in Arthur’s hold, still straddling the man’s right leg. Kneeling. God, leaking. Ready.

John licked his lips, waiting.

And Arthur, smiled, something tilted and sliding along John’s heart, his skin. Ripples, rippling. Rip-.

Arthur let John go but John stayed. The command silent but strong. Arthur loved that, must’ve as he couldn’t resist a sharp, bruising nip to the pretty column of John’s throat, his jaw, and then a soft, muddled lick to John’s scar. The over sensation, the love there. John jolted just a bit but remained as taut as he could. That little movement, though, Arthur caught and the glimmer in his eyes screamed it, said how much he loved it, how John couldn’t help it despite the command.

Still kept that glimmer there as Arthur unzipped his jeans and pulled his cock out. The confidence waned with each action. And shyness peeked in.

And that. That was where John came in.

He moved, throwing the command out the window in favor of cradling Arthur’s heart in his hands. Yes, in favor of letting Arthur know that he loved him. Yes, inside. And out.

John moved to lay in between Arthur’s legs, pushed the man back despite his kicking and bitching, and bent down to lick at Arthur’s cock. God, John missed this. His mouth sore from its fullness but needing it like a desperate, yearning ache.

He couldn’t stop himself. He lapped up all that liquid and then sucked it down inch by inch. Let it bump his throat. Held. Suspended. Swallowed. Then, drank it all down. The smell. And the feel. That throbbing, red need. Skin to skin. Lavished it. Nursed the head and coaxed more and more liquid.

Kept up a rhythm as Arthur squirmed beneath him. His hands dancing from John’s sweaty back, his tangled hair, then down to grab at his ass. Everywhere. Punchy gasps poured from his mouth and his eyes got squeezed and ripped open with every varying movement of John’s tongue, with every swallow and hum that vibrated through Arthur’s cock.

John pulled back, let the head of Arthur’s cock rest on his lips. Let Arthur watch him as he gave one final lick on the slit before letting him fall from his mouth. Arthur reached for his hair, yanked at the strands and pulled John up to bite at his mouth. John moaned, kicking his hips down against Arthur’s thighs as Arthur lavished his lips with teeth and tongue until they were just as red and swollen as their cocks.

And John could spend here forever making Arthur feel this, making Arthur smash every damn wall down.

Go beyond the skin.

Turn the lamp on.

John gripped Arthur’s jaw, kept him back from him enough, Arthur was so damn wandering that it was near difficult to do so, but John managed. Kept them suspended, panting into each other’s mouths, as he said as crashing as a rise and shatter, as a soaring bird only to be shot, “You’re a good man, Arthur Morgan.” Sealed it with a muddy gaze, with a kiss, soft as wings, as petals, lost in a silence as sticky, as heated as sizzling summer. Lost. Lost. Found. Found. “You mean so much to me.”

Squeezed his eyes now because the weight was almost too much. Was this what it felt like to have two hearts sewn together? To have all the bad parts, all of it, yes, given in hands wishing for releasement. Was this what it felt like to smash a curse? To fight back the demons? To rise again?

Hands, soft, warm, strong, muddy Earth, rippled from the back of John’s neck to his hair where they tangled and stayed there. Their bodies caved, in synch, even with John’s closed eyes, even with Arthur’s stunned silence, until their foreheads were pressed together. Get closer. Closer. John scrambled to straddle Arthur’s hips, bending down to him like flower to sun, keeping close. Closer.

Tears. John felt them on his cheeks. He kneaded a knuckle against his eyes but they were dry. They were aching for the release of salt. But they were dry. He blinked his eyes open to see Arthur there, watching him in blurry blue, in muddy Earth, in dewy grass. And Arthur was crying.

John gasped a bit. “I-.” He wanted to say something but the words got choked away.

He watched Arthur heave past the trickling tears. Felt it as John pressed his hands into Arthur’s chest, over his heart, over his lungs. Arthur shook his head, a laugh bubbling out despite it all. “Wasn’t much of a Dutch’s boy, was I?”

John shook his head. No, Arthur never was. He was good, he was better, he was more than gunning and running. A strange mix. Like John had said. He was-. He was-. “Everything. You’re everything.” That was John’s answer. That was all he could say.

He reached up, smoothed those tears away with his thumbs and pressed a kiss to Arthur’s wide open lips. “Ya get it now?” Because Arthur had to. He had to. It was how he had felt pre-curse and by god it was how he was always gonna feel, curse or not. But it was hard, it was strange because Arthur could believe him but Arthur had to know it in his own heart too.

And Arthur was nodding and he was wheezing a bit. He coughed out all the heart’s liquid and nodded some more. Nodded so much John thought his head was gonna fall. Watched, bemused a bit, as Arthur finally ground out, “Should ‘a gotten it a long time ago but I get it now.”

John ran his hands through that stupidly soft hair of Arthur’s and curled the man’s head up to kiss him. Hard. Wild. A dizzying search to find its maker. Chuckled mercilessly when Arthur’s hips jumped, when his cock slid roughly against the fabric of John’s jeans, when Arthur mewled, low, curling at the feeling.

And, yes, this was John’s. It was.

So.

John spoke. Rattled everything out for his everything.

“God, you’re fucking gorgeous.” He moaned it, curled it, as he sat back to look at Arthur, now seeing the mess this man was for him, for this, for them. And, yes, he was a mess.

Tear on his cheeks in laid. A loose and lack mouth that panted, that licked at his own lips, that let out punchy gasps when John twisted him just right. Had those eyes go all shivery sick, all dark and blown, when John had said how gorgeous he was. How Arthur swallowed hard now and then. And how his body still moved, chasing something relentlessly. His hands finding dips and crevices all around and on John to hook and nip into. Drawer’s hands that danced along John as if he was paper. And those hips of his moving just as rapidly, just as wildly, even nearly bucking John off with its pulsing neediness. Rocking John like when he rocked John’s whole body out when he had fucked him. And hmm, that memory.

John answered. He rolled his hips down, met Arthur’s movements. Watched Arthur curl his spine a bit, heard him gasp wetly into the air, when his wet and naked cock met the rough fabric of John’s jeans.

And John needed it.

He did.

So, he asked, as he dug his fingers into Arthur’s hipbones, forced him to stay and take John’s wet licks over his cock to the tune of, “Wanna fuck you. You want that?” Let Arthur’s cock fall from his mouth and slid up to whisper into Arthur’s ear, punctuating with a suck on his earlobe, “It’s okay, if not. We can-.”

But Arthur grabbed the back of his head, yanking him for a bruising kiss that was so off centered and off beat that John couldn’t even respond. Could just basically hang his mouth open for Arthur to enter his mouth and suck and claim and take. Take. Please. Then, as the spit between them broke, Arthur whispered, with a lilt, with a knowing charm, and an even brighter gleam in his eyes, “C’mon, John, show me what you got.”

This wasn’t a gunfight.

This wasn’t Arthur teaching John something only to have John fail and for Arthur to goad him, to tease him, to riffle him up.

But it felt like it.

It felt like a damn standstill.

And John fucking fell for it. Like always. He bit at Arthur’s lips which were just coaxing him and goading him on. Growled out, “Where’s that stuff you had? Ging…whatever it was.”

Arthur raised an eyebrow at him. Teased fingers shiver light along John’s ribs, then to his neck where his thumb teased a jackhammering pulse. “’M always one step ahead of you.”

John jerked.

Wide eyed, he stuttered, “When? What? Wh-?”

Arthur eased the buttons of John’s shirt away. Peeled the fabric off and threw it. He flicked John’s nipples and chuckled, dark and low and cursing, when John shivered, when he continued to look at Arthur like a weird marvelment. And Arthur was. Because, really, how and when, and god, that image in his head. It was. Fuck, it-.

Arthur unzipped his jeans and patted John’s thighs. “C’mon, sweetheart, move.” And it was chiding. But John was gone. Silent. Just couldn’t do anything but listen.

He scrambled up, kicking his jeans off and standing there in the open air, naked with Arthur sitting on the ground beneath him.

Arthur who was…

Unreal.

Hands cradled John’s thighs. A daring tongue licked his cock and John gasped, reached for blonde hair to keep Arthur there, to keep him sucking out his wetness all for him, only for him. And in between rolls, Artur revealed, “You were sleeping for a bit and I was…a bit ambitious but…”

Ambitious?

Arthur fucking Morgan was a goddamn tease and a real piece of shit.

John kneeled on the Earth, pushed Arthur until he was lying on his back again. This time, Arthur wasn’t shy and wiggly for him. He was confident. Knee pulled up to his chest and arms crossed behind his head. Laid all pretty and naked and hard and muscles splayed out at their most gorgeous all to get John-.

“You’re pretty red, darling. Don’t think you can do much in your state.”

Oh, John was red alright.

Red with a pulsing need that tangled sweetly and oh so brutally with Arthur’s teasing.

And, yeah, Arthur must’ve guessed by now that all his teasing riled John up in a very heated way. Yes, a drowsy stab low in the belly.

But what Arthur didn’t quite know yet was that the drowsy heat could pour.

John kept a hand on Arthur’s knee, the one already pulled to his chest. Kept the man vulnerable. Kept him open to John. Felt Arthur’s knee twitch, like he wanted to close in, despite the confidence he tried to exude.

John grinned at that, just a little. The tiniest of victories, really. But, more he chased.

Like rain, he kissed down Arthur’s trembling thigh. Arthur didn’t make a sound. But his body did. Felt the shivers in muscles, in yearning need.

John dug in. His thumb eased into Arthur’s entrance and he nearly passed out at the easiness, at the give in Arthur’s body. He needed Arthur around his cock. Needed the man to wiggle, to squirm, to fucking tremble and heave with it. Needed it.

He looked up, met Arthur’s narrowed eyes that dared him to do it.

And John did.

He skipped two fingers. Went straight to three. Fucked Arthur hard with them, curled in and around until he found it. His prostrate. Pressed in hard and then when the ache was there, when the fullness must’ve kicked in, when the kicks and jabs to his prostrate must’ve been licking fire along Arthur’s spine and deep and low in his belly, John sucked his cock into his mouth and swallowed it down. Nose pressed to stomach, John hummed so roughly and off key, no longer caring, just needing to play Arthur as good as he fucking gave.

And god, yes, yes. Arthur nearly choked him, stuttering his hips up and into John’s mouth. Chasing John’s suction but then fucking back on John’s fingers in a strange, alluring dance like John was doing so much, zapping and stealing so much of Arthur that the man couldn’t decide what he needed most. A swallow on his cock or a hard fuck into his ass and a press against that spot inside him. Both. Both. And John gave him both. Gave him everything.

And just when Arthur started up his wiggling – hands in his own hair, hands in John’s hair to keep his mouth on him, hands on John’s arm to keep that hand fucking in him full and fast – hands skimming quakes up his chest – cheeks red with it, mouth just as red and swollen bursting with punchy breaths now-.

John stopped.

He eased his mouth off. Took his fingers out.

He backed off just a bit, hovered as he took in Arthur’s crashing and rising, rising and crashing, then, stillness. Whining.

Arthur was whining. “John, what?” Dazed, now. God. A mess.

He was blinking, all confused and pretty like. Gone.

John grasped his jaw, found the blue, and smiled all syrupy and as sick and wild as rising, soaring summer, as sharp as wolves’ claws. Bursting. He raised an eyebrow at Arthur’s laxness, at how he growled just a bit at John’s lack of toying with him. John teased, “Don’t think you’re ready, darling.” It was husky. It was shadowy. Find yourself in the dark darling. Then, to the light. To the light. To-.

Arthur jabbed a foot into John’s ass, kicking at him. He rolled his eyes just as his much as his chasing hips. “Yeah, yeah. Shut up, John.”

Hm. John wanted to bite a remark but well…most times, Arthur was indeed always right, loathe he was to admit such a thing.

And really, he was aching with it at this point. All them teasing. And Arthur, so willing beneath him, so warm and melting with it. Something that John had rarely seen. All bad parts, now. All of it.

John took his cock in hand. It twitched at his grip. God, his cock was aching. Felt like he could come from a few tugs. Knew it wouldn’t last long between them but at this point, the need was threatening to crest and crash.

Sighing, he puffed away his hair, then-.

Arthur’s hands on him. Slow. But focused. Furrowed eyebrows. And a strong, sure expression. John, confused, paused, let Arthur rise up to pull his hair into a tie. Oh. John shivered. Memories of before. When Arthur had smoothed his hair free of tangles. When Arthur had played his body just as well. And oh. He blinked. And Arthur kissed their echoes, laughing just a bit at this weird silliness between them which somehow melted prettily with their nakedness, and their vulnerabilities, and their scars.

Here, without his matted hair, John could see a bit more and he didn’t have a care in the world. Determined, he gave one final, petal like kiss to Arthur’s cheek before he re-grabbed his cock and slid forward into Arthur’s waiting heat.

Each pulsing pause lingered and ran far longer than time itself. John heaved and Arthur struggled to breathe alongside him. He smoothed his hands along Arthur’s stomach, coaxing Arthur to lay back, to calm despite the thrumming beneath the skin that John could feel beginning to rise again, and to relax against the stretching burn.

And god, Arthur was tight and he was warm. Every muscle encased John’s cock and he twitched hard at the feeling. Just warmth. Needed it. Needed Arthur to squeeze against him and to let John take and claim. And, then, finally, Arthur met his eyes and nodded.

John responded with a few shallow thrusts, moving Arthur’s pliable body around, hooking his legs up until they were over his shoulders, before the wild caught up to him.

Peace subsided for this.

Arthur’s body seemed to snap and everything in him rushed out in a near silent scream as John moved his hips in a rhythm that dripped sugary secretions, as if they were viscous, slipping nonsensically between slow and soft, to a pause where John’s cock caught on the aching, red rim, Arthur always suspended, spine snapped in waiting, and stayed like that for far too long, before slamming back in hard and quick. And it was a slipping and sticking along the Earth, encased by it. And, yes, it was full and it was aching and it was pounding and thrumming.

John listened to Arthur’s mindless little noises, something that was caught between screams and whines. Slipped his hands around Arthur’s sweaty skin, spread his ass more apart and stilled his movements to shallow thrusts. With this, John gave in. He stayed inside Arthur, letting them throb together, letting Arthur’s naked, leaking cock get trapped needy between them, as he bent down and pressed their chests together.

He cradled Arthur’s head, and watched Arthur look blearily at him then through. “Arthur.” The man hummed in response, nosing John’s throat and whispering punchy pleas into his skin. “Wanna come, baby?” Arthur nodded, fucking down on John’s cock. John moaned, grunting as Arthur coaxed him back into moving. John fumbled for Arthur’s cock, squeezing the slit and thumbing out warm liquid. God. Every part of Arthur encased him in summer. Encased him in desert heat. Knew Arthur needed it. Slow, soft thrusts that Arthur met and a thumb on his slit coupled with soft words, with-. “Missed you, love you, c’mon, c’mon.”

Arthur gasped wetly into his neck, tears now, John could feel them on his neck. And he watched as Arthur came for him, as his body thrashed then stilled as John shushed him, as he licked all the wetness from his stomach, as he pulled out. And, Arthur, reached for him and with one single twist and tug plus a wandering up that pressed against his throat, calling him such a good boy for fucking him so, and John was gone.

In a blur, he groaned, raspy, choked on nothing but his everything. John bent into Arthur, jerking a bit when Arthur palmed his excess and licked it clean. John watched, ravished as that tongue of his worked his own fingers, licking John clean from his skin. Fuck. John loved him. Just-.

Arthur kissed him, let John taste himself on his tongue and John sucked and sucked, let their kisses slow and meld and end quietly into peace. Then, soft, against John’s scarred cheek, Arthur murmured, “Love you too, John. Now, c’mon, ‘m back’s hurting.”

And, yeah, Arthur was right. Old age was kicking them in the ass and the Earth probably didn’t do a great justice for them as say a bed might. Hm. John kissed his cheek. “Sorry.” Stood, then, reached for Arthur, helped him stand and held him upright when he stumbled. Held Arthur, naked and a right mess, close to him. Picked off bits of Earth that got to stuck to his back. Smiled when Arthur tucked into him. Enjoyed this, this back and forth between them where they could swing into vulnerability and be met with the same.

Then, Arthur tilted his blue eyes, now brighter than dark, up at him and patted John’s sticky chest. “’M about down, cowboy.”

John laughed, shaking his head. “Yeah, right.” But, he relented anyway, interlacing their fingers together and holding on despite Arthur’s startle, his pause. Arthur kept glancing at him, keeping him close as they walked together into the house.

Then, paused.

“Huh.”

John hummed in question, plastering himself against Arthur’s back, sneaking hands down to his hips, his ass, before hooking his chin over Arthur’s shoulder to see what made him pause.

There, on the table that teetered somewhere not quite in the center of the kitchen, was a note.

The two of them walked in unison, Arthur being the one to pick up the note. They read it together.

_Sons,_

_While we would have loved to stay for the reunion, we believe there is something better ahead, perhaps by Washington thereabouts._

_Care to read the news when it’s all said and done._

_And don’t worry a thing about Sadie and Charles. We got them out before the reunion got outta hand._

_Love,_

_Hosea and Dutch._

John laughed and couldn’t stop.

Arthur shoved his shoulder, his ears and cheeks all red. God. John kissed the heated skin, bubbles of laughter rippling along the cells and making Arthur squirm and hit him some more.

Hmm, then there was a quiet and John grumbled out, “Looks like all you needed to break the curse was you.”

Arthur bristled at that and in true Arthur fashion, he handed John all responsibility, said, “Nah, ‘s pretty sure it was after you so…it was everyone finally loving each other I guess.” He wrinkled his nose and John gagged.

“Can you imagine loving _Dutch_?”

Then, in unison, “Poor Hosea.”

But, no, really, Arthur was a gorgeous idiot. John nipped his lips, ravished the red and swollen skin with his tongue. He pressed a hand over Arthur’s heart and said in between rolls and presses, “Me thinks it was just love, dear. Especially the one right here.”

Arthur chuckled despite how shy and gooey he got, at how he seemed to get even smaller than his lumbering frame could provide. “John Marston, poetic? Why, I thought I’d never see the day.” John growled, slapping Arthur’s shoulder as he stepped away from him and towards the bedroom.

He chanced a glance over his shoulder, watching Arthur stand there in a strange lull in the middle of the little farm house in the middle of the East.

It reminded John of when he had heard Arthur come up the stairs in that hotel room. Something that pulsed with memories and familiarities, and how awful it could’ve been for them if they had never chased the wind to this.

How awful it could’ve been if Micah hadn’t been so impulsive, so angry, if it hadn’t gotten over and done with so quickly. And yet how foolish the devil’s plaything was to think that what had held all the pieces of the gang together was the need for gold, senseless killings, and all that built on a foundation that lacked real and true and loving relationships, from the familial to the soulmate.

But, then, it made sense for the devil’s plaything could’ve never guessed that there was such a thing as love.

And that it all resided and fanned out from one person, the one that Micah should’ve banished, should’ve made an animal, should’ve killed.

Yes, Arthur. All of John’s doom in one person. All of John’s everything standing there. Desert and summer, okay. Mountain cold, okay. All of it okay. For this.

Everything.

Forever.

John called to him, “You coming, grumps, or am I gonna clean myself?”

And Arthur, always, responded, like a chime on the wind, “Of course.”


	3. reprieve (bereave)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Now, it is Arthur's turn to speak a little bit.

Now here I go again

I see the crystal visions  
I keep my visions to myself, it's only me  
Who wants to wrap around your dreams and,  
Have you any dreams you'd like to sell?  
Dreams of loneliness,  
Like a heartbeat, drives you mad  
In the stillness of remembering, what you had,  
And what you lost and what you had and what you lost

When the rain washes you clean, you'll know  
You'll know, you will know, you'll know

Dreams – Fleetwood Mac

+

Arthur laid there in their bed. Theirs. With John next to him. Arthur was on his back, knee pulled up, and watched John shift and gather sheets, blankets. The whole damn bed really. It made Arthur smile. It made Arthur sigh in contentedness, in something fragile as, even so, John chased his warmth and, quite irritably although cutely, kicked Arthur repeatedly in his sleep. Too close so it hurt more. Always shifting and wiggling about. Going headfirst into anything. Too much passion. Too much fire.

His.

Arthur hummed.

His. 

He lifted his hand up and held it there in the air between them.

Did he dare?

He knew from sharing tents with John before that he was a light sleeper. Hell, all of them were. But to touch, to understand that what was curled into his chest and digging cold toes into his shin was real and tangible. 

To touch.

His.

Arthur let his hand move. He cradled John’s head, fingers teasing those god awful matted tangles, and held. Slid his hand down to jaw, to scars on cheek, to beard, and then his arm was there, it was around John now. It was pulling him now. And John was scuffling, sniffling even, but bending towards him, easy now, as he fully turned, resting now with half his stomach on Arthur’s chest and the other side of him resting on the bed. Curled into him. Head tucked beneath Arthur’s chin.

It tickled.

Love tickled.

And it trickled. 

And there, there…

Arthur scrubbed at his cheeks and winced at the salt there. He was crying. Over realness. He was crying.

It had been such a long year without John, without the end to the curse. None of it had gotten faster. None of it had gotten easier. He had encased the home in pines that were growing steadier now. There were fence posts that he had dutifully done under the blazing sun. And before winter had spun, he had dug into preserving and canning what he had managed. 

Had, under the sifting flour that dusted rolling hills of rebirth with its necrosis, huddled in deep dark corners of the house with joy and hope shivering, wilting at his side. 

Memories were left at the door, to be brushed in tendrils by the bitter wind that transmitted winter’s disease, nature’s curse, her poor, pretty furry. 

And, if memories managed to leak in through the door, in frost on the inside of the window, they were then crammed into the cans in the basement with all of the other preserves.

Yes, in the blue black cold to lose all hope.

Had risen from it to spring, to rebirth, to the chime on the wind, to-.

John.

Awake now. Real now. Tangible. 

Watched all the seasons spin. Watched them all fade away. Heard their buzzing, their whipping in, lead to this. This. His.

John blinked at him, all sleepy like. He yawned, shifting a bit, curling into Arthur’s touch which was still running through his hair and cradling his head. John, with eyes like golden Earth, watched him, watched him be silent, then, said, “Could hear you thinking in my sleep.” 

He even laughed, all teeth, then rattling with a hum as he bent to kiss Arthur. And Arthur let him lead the kiss, let John bite and nip at his lips, let him enter his mouth with a growl and suck at his tongue as if he could suck all the thoughts out of Arthur’s head, all the throbbing red in his beat up heart.

And, god, sparks. Down to Arthur’s belly. Could feel the aches now. Hadn’t before. Got too lost in thought but the aches were there now. He held on to John tighter, slipping his left hand to press into spine and the other to hold the boy by his neck. Kept him close.

Always keep wild spring, passionate summer close. 

Abide the winter. Shiver with joy and hope in the corner.

Bust open the preserves, release the memories, the feelings, the truth.

Release.

Release. 

Release. 

Arthur heaved. He ripped the kiss apart, and startled when John bolted towards him and pressed his thumbs into Arthur’s sticky cheeks. The boy furrowed his brow, he got this tick about him and he zeroed in, so easily now, “Them better be good tears.”

And they were. And yet they weren’t. They were both. Arthur huffed, slapping John’s hands away. But John didn’t move, didn’t even do nothing even as Arthur sat up. John simply sat in his lap, legs spread to hook over Arthur’s hips.

And Arthur held, two hands now holding John by his ribs, and something in him must’ve been shaking, something in him must’ve been crying again because John was kissing him all petal like, on his cheek, on his lips, then, the softest one on his forehead with words mumbled in, “’M not pushing but when you’re ready, I’ll be here. Always.”

Arthur kneaded the skin above John’s ribs, letting them rest there, John risen up above him, hovering over him as kisses laid to rest on his skin and hands tangled in his hair. 

And Arthur released, and shattered the glass on the floor.

“Just being…huh, afraid…again.” John hummed, the sound vibrating out all the rest. “Hard to think any of this is real.”

John raised an eyebrow at that, his kisses pausing. He bent down and looked at Arthur. In those eyes, in that wild, chasing gaze, Arthur rested. John cradled his jaw and Arthur tilted into it, into John, real and still so cold in his arms. Cold like graves, like-. “I wish a lot of things weren’t real. This ain’t one of ‘em.” John, his words hardening into the crevices of his raspy voice, added, “This is real. I’ll be here to tell you. Every morning, if that’s what it takes to get it through your thick head.” He tapped against Arthur’s head, gently, and Arthur laughed. 

Then, he quieted, for John’s words were hard for his heart to gather. Could always pick the plants and press them into his journal. Could always draw ‘em if he couldn’t. But this? These were things his heart couldn’t quite pick, couldn’t quite draw.

He wasn’t much. He was a bad man who had senselessly killed for nothing. He was a better fool, the best, who had believed the words of a mad man and who had done not that much but enough-. God, had it been enough to ease Micah’s curse? 

And yet John had cradled him, had loved him, was doing it now. Kneading circles against his throbbing temples, and kissing where he could, and trickling his touch all around him, in then through. 

A bad man and a better fool but a human nonetheless who was striving to be a better man and a bad fool. 

A man who had found the one thing that’d stick around for the transition.

John, soft, “You with me, yet?” Then, teasingly, “If you think any more, you ain’t gonna be real.” Arthur laughed, the sound getting smothered as he buried his head in John’s neck and nipped. John jolted in his arms, slipping a bit, gasping even as he laughed, even as he bit out, “Please don’t leave me with the farm. I’ll ruin it.”

Arthur laughed even harder at that. He lifted his head, shaking it, as he bit at John’s jaw, and met John’s glare with a glimmering gaze of his own. “At least you admit your faults, John.” 

John rolled his eyes. “Lucky son a bitch that you’re hot.”

Arthur rose an eyebrow. “Just hot?”

John slapped his hands away from his ribs and pulled back then away but he didn’t get far as Arthur dragged him in by his ankle. John wiggled on to his back and Arthur eased in between his legs, hovering over him now, easing John into vulnerability but meeting it with his own, as he slid his hands up John’s chest, pinning him, then kissing him with a solid, warm, strong, “I love you, John.”

John hooked an ankle around his hip and canted bone up to meet and grind against Arthur’s stomach and then a smooth, daring, dashing slide against Arthur’s cock. Arthur jolted, huffing, when John cackled knowingly. 

Arthur sighed out, “Nevermind. I take it all back.”

John pouted, going all golden and molten for Arthur, laying on his back and tilting his neck just a bit, almost achingly and blaringly telling Arthur exactly where he needed his hands. And Arthur did. Of course. Because, okay, he really needed to work on the fool bit. 

But, with a single press of his thumb along John’s pulse, John answered him, said, “Love you too.” 

And with the assurances, with this reality, Arthur knew that later, he’d hand John his journal and, in its pages, will be his heart’s weeping, his brain’s shivering to gather all the pieces.

He’d hand John an answer to the curse just as much as their meeting did, as their love in the hotel and in the Earth surrounded by nature’s grace did. 

Surrounded. Consumed. 

Winter will always be a threatening rot. And death and pain will always ease in behind as its devoted soldiers. 

But in the middle will always be hope and joy and love and beauty, born again to rise and collide with the green rolling hills, to be found in the chittering birds as they’d soar sky high. And, yes too, the wild, heated passion of embracement. 

Just listen to nature’s chime.

Find.

Find.

Found.


End file.
